It doesn't matter .. that post is the best contribution made to this board by anyone.

I agree. You can thank me for that. Actually though, I think the posts that followed it were very good as well. These posts combined sum up pretty well the debate regarding whether law is a good profession to enter. See the link in my previous post.

Here's the situation: I was employed for a very small law firm (2 attorneys) this past summer. Guy I worked for is a friend of my dad.

I've got a callback interview with a midsized firm. Employer from this past summer knows a partner at the firm and says he will make a call to him to put in a good word for me. The problem is that my dad tells me that my former employer is not exactly "well-thought of" by some. Some people think he's lazy. My dad says he's a smart guy, but he, too, says he's a bit lazy.

Former employer told me he didn't want to "use up his favors" when I called him about the firm for the screening interview, but he said he would make the call for the callback interview. I think former employer is pretty good friends with the partner at the firm I have the callback with though.

My roommate tells me to use my connection anyway, and that it can't hurt. I worry that using it could screw me though. (I assume midsized law firm perceives most firms on resumes to be decent. But partner at the firm may inform hiring committee that my former employer's firm is not that great, thus hurting me rather than helping me.) If, after using my connection, I don't get an offer, I will be pissed off and wonder whether I shouldn't have used the connection. (Same thing if I don't use the connection, but to a lesser extent.)

This advice has been helpful. Based solely on this advice, I think I may join.

Anyone else care to contribute?

Also, with regard to the Honors frat: I'm in the top 15% and on Law Review, and I haven't heard anything about it. I just looked it up and sent an email to the president of it at my school to see if there are any requirements for joining.

Here is a good discussion of the pros and cons of a legal career:__________________________________________________________________________

Date: September 6th, 2006 2:24 AMAuthor: TheRepoMan

0Ls [0Ls are those who have not entered law school yet], by now, you've probably had a few people warn you about going into the law. Perhaps a practicing lawyer has told you to not become a lawyer. Maybe a law student has warned you not to go to law school. You probably laughed nervously and stuck your nose back into your TestMasters prep book thinking "What do they know?"

They know a lot.

By all means, listen to them. They are not trying to shut you out of some exclusive guild. They are trying to help you. Misery lies ahead. They are giving you a coded warning about what the morass you are willingly throwing yourself into is actually like.

"The law" is just some bull invented by people. It's not a legitimate academic field of study, like sociology or philosophy. There are no "right answers." You will learn how to justify any position, no matter how outrageous. You will hear these terms, among many others, until you want to f**cking puke: "public policy considerations," "reasonableness" and "balancing." You will seriously consider questions such as whether or not a four year old can batter an adult woman, without pausing to think about how absurd the question is in the first place. You will jettison any common sense, decency and fair-mindedness you once had and replace it with mechanical, pseudo-intellectual thought processes that do nothing to advance the quality of life in our society. Laws are written and applied arbitrarily. If not, they are applied depending on political considerations. Liberals and conservatives are equally guilty of this. "The law" is nothing more than a set of fictions agreed to by elites -- it is a giant lie. For the rest of your professional career, day in and day out, your job will be to read this enormous tangle of equivocal language, evasions and hedges. You will find that the quality of both academic and professional writing in the law is uniformly terrible. Your job will be to pass it off to others that you can somehow make sense of the senseless. Being a lawyer is futile. Your soul will be sucked out of your eyeballs and you will regret going to law school. It's nothing like it's portrayed on TV or in the movies or in potboiler paperback legal thrillers. Don't waste your time, don't take the LSAT, don't blow $140,000 on a law school tuition. You are still young. Enjoy your bodies while they still work, enjoy this planet before humans destroy the environment entirely. Go outside. Bike. Hike. Go to the beach. Play football. f**ck. Go to a bar with your friends. Do whatever it is you really want to do, like become a chef or fly airplanes.

Just don't go to law school.

Date: September 6th, 2006 10:18 AMAuthor: Pinderhughes

This is as good an articulation of the pitfalls of law as I've seen written. All true.

Date: September 6th, 2006 12:33 PMAuthor: Doctor Zaius

If you want money for supporting a family, vacations, and some standard of living there's a good chance you'll need to enter the corporate world. Whether you're an ibanker, analyst, accountant, or lawyer - your concerns will largely be the same. Too many hours, disillusioned idealism (which you really should have left in college anyway), 'fictional' rules invented and largely adhered to by elites..

So the OP is suggesting not to goto law. What praytell should I do? Become a graduate student in one of the more 'academic' fields like sociology? Become a farmer or choose another job where I do 12+ hours of PHYSICAL labor (which is always worse than the air conditioned office hrs whined about here). Please. The only thing this rant proves is that OP has never held a real job outside of the law. With no basis for comparison its yet another annoying case of grass is greener syndrome.

Date: September 6th, 2006 12:42 PMAuthor: William Walton

The last post is correct. Work sucks.....it's as simple as that. Do they think being a Big 4 accountant is more fun than being a lawyer? What about slaving away in middle managment at some retail chain? Management sucks people. And most people burn out of banking so it must suck too.

Date: September 6th, 2006 12:50 PMAuthor: Doctor Zaius

Right. The majority of corporate jobs are middle management in nondescript back offices. Talk to those guys about their soul. Half of their jobs are being shot to India and the ones that remain revolve around ensuring that TPS reports have the correct amount of signatures or that their budgets come in favorable. BIG four accountants end up working as much as some lawyers for less than half the pay and usually in the client's 'audit room' which is a windowless closet shared with 10 other drones. Soul sucking seemingly meaningless and arbitrary work is not isolated to the field of law.